Mock slave auction to teach elementary students about slavery - yea or nay?

A better thing to do to get the kids to understand it is show them pictures of the slaves, let them listen to slave narratives, let them hear the songs they sang. As a child growing up in Charleston, SC, all these things made such an indelible impression on me, I have never forgotten it. I never would have gotten that from some dumb mock auction that misses the point completely.

A classroom slave auction could easily turn into fun and games. All you need is a couple clowns in the class. It would be better to show the TV series Roots or, as @ladymia suggested, listen to slave narratives to keep the subject serious.

Like the kids are going to get any real idea of true slavery from that. As if you can recreate the way true Negros from Africa felt being sold on a block, after traveling across the Atlantic in the conditions they had to endure, or growing up on plantations as slaves and never having the right to a relationship with another if the owner doesn’t want you to.
At best they got a good taste of what BDSM has to offer, and the teachers got some ‘special’ kicks out of it.

nay. just show them this clip from Amistad nothing friendly about the good ship Amistad.

It’s stupid because it’s a fun day of school compared to normal study, making the association of “fun” with the subject.

It’s wrong and demeaning if the races used in the mock exercise are historically accurate.

It’s also wrong and demeaning due to the touching.

nay

This will just embarrass the kids. To learn history you have to look at history through books, personal testimony and exhibits. I’m sure there is plenty of this material available in the United States.

Slave auctions are a symptom of underlying social and behavioural thought patterns. It was a small part of the infrastructure that arose to turn those thoughts into a ‘profitable’ business. I can’t see that focussing in on this one process throws much light on why slavery should not be considered ethical or moral. As abaraxadac hinted at, there are people that like chains and things like that for more personal reasons. I would honestly be concerned that someone like that was manipulating the situation for their own interests.

I am told that Nazis used to get holocaust victims to take all their clothes off before entering the gas chambers. Would a reconstruction of these events aid our analysis of the Nazi regime? I don’t think so. This is no different.

Our school used to do this as a class fund raiser. We’d auction, one student would buy another. The “slave,” who volunteered to be one, then had to do whatever the master said for the rest of the day (within reason, of course).

But, really, having a slave auction as a teaching tool really seems no different than having those bogus class elections, having a mock up UN, or assigning parts when reading a Shakespear play.

@12Oaks – really? Slave auctions for fun? Ha, ha! I never laughed so much!

Sorry I meant, I never laughed at all.

Let’s have organ auctions too. Get offal from the local Wal-Mart and auction livers, kidneys. lungs and such. That would be such a laugh, especially when Auntie Meg is still on the waiting list. LOL! ROFL! etc! And it would be so informative about human anatomy and the different systems for the provision of healthcare.

Nay =/

I don’t know that trying to stage a slave auction would actually teach the students anything. You can’t possibly understand true slave auctions unless you staged a realistic one, but that would include doing things to the students that are illegal and immoral. There are plenty of other ways to teach them about slavery.

@12Oaks Our high school band actually did that, but it was all in fun. The juniors and seniors got to “purchase” a freshman or sophomore for a week. We didn’t have to call them master or anything, but they would give us odd jobs to raise money for the school.

We had a car wash, with only the freshmen and sophomores doing the work of course. Then the juniors and seniors would toss a handful of soap on one of the windows and say, “you missed a spot” and the owner would pay an extra dollar for us rewashing the soapy spot.

We also sold lemonade that we squeezed fresh on the spot, but for our customers to get the lemonade in a cup it cost extra. For them to get sugar in it, it cost extra. Straws were extra… It ended up costing the customers about $5 for a single cup of lemonade, but they all had a good time and laughed about it. It was crazy fun.

Everyone in town knew what the “games” involved, and they were all prepared to participate and have their payments randomly increase, according to what the juniors and seniors made us do.

I think this is a wonderful idea. Then you can reenact the Salem witch trials (and drownings), the Trail of Tears, the Rosenberg’s execution, the Challenger disaster, 9/11, and waterboarding. Any children who AREN’T traumatized, you’ll know not to turn your back on.

I really don’t think it’s appropriate for 2nd graders. To show them what this period was like, you should show pictures, show some real life slave trading signs, and maybe even make them write a short paragraph of how they would have felt if they were a slave during that time. I could see this being a good activity for middle or high school.

Sounds like it would likely be a memorable and above-average experience to me.

Better yet would be a simulation of the wicked situation in Wisconsin right now! ;-)

It seems like I am the only one here, but my reaction would be…. depends.

Most likely it is a bad idea, but if taken as a concept base and then worked into an educationally responsible program, then it could be.

One could for instance make children think about how cultural aspects and group think can shift morals so far from what we nowadays find acceptable. It will be very tricky to execute it in a way that doesn’t traumatise the children though, and still respects the people that have fallen victim to slavery.

Slavery and its history is however an important topic that has a lot to offer in an educational sense. Like other mass crimes, one has to always be aware that these are failures of society as a whole. We need to educate our children about our past to allow them not to have to relive it.

Maybe some of you have seen the 1981 movie The Wave. Based on a true story, it shows how vital it is to always be vigilant for dangerous group think and how risky experiments at school may be.

If they’re older kids, it could be used to impart some deeper understandings of the harm race-based slavery inflicted on black families and communities. If they’re too young, you really can’t get that sort of understanding.

No. While I’m a huge fan of role-playing and the power of theatre (this is my field of work), nevertheless this kind of psychological simulations experiements can go too far.

The Stanford prison experiment is an example of a simulation run on university students where people knew what they were getting into, but the role-playing basically took over and went too far. And this was college level students. Here we’re talking about six year olds! The thing that might stick in their minds is the emotion (whether it is the power of absolute control over another human being, or the feeling of being treated as an object), rather than the reflection that comes afterwards.

I would strongly caution against this.

I have a concern that even in high school that this activity would appear so civilized that it would make slavery appear benign. Are you going to rip screaming babies from their mothers’ bosoms? Are you going to have an auctioneer groping the slaves, and pronouncing them fecund? Are you going to have masters beating slaves bloody to set the tone of a new relationship? Of course not. You can’t teach what slavery is about by having some kind of fundraiser.

I agree with @Kraigmo. A mock slave auction would be a “fun” activity. And in order to teach it accurately, you’d have to face the kids with disgusting realities that they are probably too young to handle. Maybe there is some tactful, yet still realistic way to do that. I just can’t imagine one.

I couldn’t find it on youtube, but when I was in a college class called “the Anthropology of Race and Racism” we watched a video of a teacher using a class participation exercise to teach a class of young children about racism. They were divided by eye color, with one being the favored and the other the “lesser” eye color. Their desks were in separate areas, and the unfavored ones didn’t get recess. I forget what else there was, but I believe they switched places at one point. Afterwards, they all had a class discussion about how that made them feel and what they had learned. Something like that seems more appropriate for the age group. They can learn about the harsher realities later.